


Mira and Pattern Magic

by spamyoucantswim (TelltaleGesticulation)



Category: Friends At The Table
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 11:18:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4389818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TelltaleGesticulation/pseuds/spamyoucantswim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young dwarf woman talks about her relationship with pattern magic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mira and Pattern Magic

**Author's Note:**

> Friends at The Table is an excellent actual play podcast you can find at http://friendsatthetable.net/ . Their first season was a session of Dungeon World (http://www.dungeon-world.com/) 
> 
> Pattern Magic is, well, magic which comes from patterns. The patterns are complicated and seemingly random, and few people know how to use them, and their use ( and (often-accidental) misuse) can cause nearly anything to happen.
> 
> I'm too nervous to write using any of the FatT player characters just yet, because they are too lovely. Maybe some day.

“I am so much happier now that I know about pattern magic,” she says, grinning. Her face is clean-shaven, making her look like a much younger dwarf than she is. She wears her hair in two braids, one five-strand and one seven-strand, and her hair is split unevenly but precisely. Bits of ribbon and gold and silver are woven into her braids in a way that almost tricks your eye into thinking there’s a repeating pattern there. “So many more things make sense. And the things that don’t, they’re just mysteries to pull apart in time.” Her clothing is mostly simple: a light brown shirt, green trousers, cream socks, brown boots. She also wears a purple scarf, embroidered in gold with a geometric design that tangles and untangles itself along the scarf’s length.

“My poor mother, S’mot bless her,” she continues, “she thought I was crazy. Always tried to get me to change my routine. But I knew if I was careful enough, if I did everything right, I could be as lucky as I wanted to be.” She kicks at the dirt, looking distracted, and begins to push pebbles around with the toe of her boot. “The first thing is waking up. It’s hard to pick an exact moment to wake at first, but eventually your body can feel it and it does all the work for you. The best time I’ve found, for me, is between when the sun first shows and when the entire sun is over the horizon, which is pretty nice, since that’s a fairly normal time to wake up.” The pebbles now resemble the outline of a bird. She kicks them away. “Next is getting out of bed. Then breakfast. I...” she hesitates, smiles self-consciously, looks away. “I don’t feel like I should talk about breakfast. It’s complicated. It sounds weirder that most of it. But most of the day goes like that. I get up, I eat, I get dressed, I go out and do specific things. And I always have a good day, if I do all the right steps.

“It took a long time to get an idea of what exactly to do, of course. Find out what mattered and what didn’t. I still don’t know everything. I have to put my socks on in order, but not my shoes. It doesn’t seem to matter if I braid my hair or not, but I feel happier when it’s like this, so I usually do it. And there are things that if I don’t do them, everything else good I do turns bad. Usually I just stay inside if I mess those up. Try not to get anyone hurt, if I can.” Her foot is still working at the dirt, digging a little hole, gathering dirt into a little mound. She squats down and draws a circle around the hole, straight through the mound, with her little finger. She stands up quickly and wipes her hand on her trousers.

“When my mother died it was my fault. I didn’t know the whole routine yet; I think it was breakfast, I think I did it wrong. I went swimming in the river down the hill. A fish swam past and brushed against my legs while I floated there. That’s a bad one.” She purses her lips. “The first time I remember it happening my brother got lost in the woods for three days. Another time I got ill and my father had to hold me in the river to break my fever. I ran home as fast as I could. I knew I had to fix it. But I didn’t get to. When I got home, mother was there on the floor, still breathing but going, and I was the only one there to be with her. I tried to sing the song but I couldn’t remember the words, all I could say was ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ over and over.”

She falls silent. She ties a knot in the end of her scarf. She murmurs the word ‘sorry’ a few times, and it seems for a moment that she’s going to cry. She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

“D-…my father said she was good, she was good so it was ok, she didn’t need the song. We sang it anyway, once I found them and made them come home. I still sing it for her sometimes, just in case.

“After we buried her I left, I didn’t want to be there anymore. I didn’t want to let anyone else get hurt. I was on my own for a long time after that. I hid from people. Hunted for food and brought extra to traders for supplies. I didn’t sleep, really. It’s easy once you know how.”

A bird flies close overhead. She watches it until it lands on a rooftop, points at it, refocuses.

“When I saw the fire my first instinct was to leave, but I heard screaming, and I thought I should try to help if I could. It was a ways off so by the time I got there all the livestock’d been let out to the fields and most everyone was safe. There was one home that still had kids inside, but everyone outside was in a fog, standing around, staring. I was scared but I covered my hair and went in. Of course since I’d never been in a burning house I had no idea what to do,” she says, now occupying herself by searching out spots of lichen on the stones of the wall behind her with her fingers. She gives each a different number of taps. “The smoke blinded me so I had to shuffle around listening for the children.” Two taps. “I burned myself pretty well, I still have marks on my legs.” Seven taps. “But eventually I found them.” Three taps. “One of them could barely breathe, I was carrying him and leading the other two, but it was so smoky and hot I couldn’t figure out how to get them out safely.  I pulled them to a window so we could maybe climb out but we were too high up. I held the small one out the window so he could breathe better air and I called for help. Everyone was still standing around doing nothing, even as they saw us.” Sixteen taps.

“Then this guy, this orc guy, he came running up, I don’t know from where. Well, I do know, he was picking herbs in the field when all the cows and horses and pigs came running, but I didn’t see where he came from when it happened, he told me later. He showed up, and he started working. Drawing in the dust on the stones, ripping up a cloth, yelling, prying mortar from between two bricks. Nonsense, it looked like. But I felt something in the pit of my heart. I saw the pattern through the chaos, as they say. And then he stomped and the smoke just…dissipated.” She gestures with flat hands, palms down, sweeping down and out. “We just walked out. I gave the children to their parents, they were fine, a few burns, the little one gets short of breath when he plays too hard, but all alive and safe. I started toward the orc. He put his arms out to catch me before I even started falling, but he still stumbled a little when I hit him. I’m heavier than I look.” She chuckles and smiles with a little pride. “He apologized that he hadn’t seen the fire sooner. Then everything went black.

“He stayed the whole time I was recovering. His name was Dorran. I asked him how he’d swept the smoke away. He said, it’s called Pattern Magic, and I felt it in my heart again. I asked him how he knew what to do, and he told me about the New Archive, and how they have books and scrolls and oral histories and legends all filed away and all you have to do is find what you want to know and you can know it. If you’re allowed in, of course. He told me that there were libraries full of documented patterns, but also there were people who find and share new patterns and ideas and strategies, and that the smoke pattern was something he figured out on his own, though he’d never done it on a fire as big as that before.

“When he left, I went with him. He said they probably wouldn’t let me into the Archive, but that he’d teach me a little as we went. I tried to be a good student, and some of it was easy: all you have to do is memorize. A lot of it is harder, though, about feeling out what seems correct, fighting the desire for symmetry and repetition and finding the real path.” She begins scratching at her right palm. As she scratches, something begins to emerge from the skin of her hand. “Mostly, though, traveling with Dorran made me realize I was right. My routine was important. I could have an effect, even if people didn’t believe me. It made me happy to know I could do good. It’s a lot of work to prevent danger, and almost no one notices, but now that I know I can, how could I stop?” After a moment it is apparent the form beneath are the petals of a large pink flower. She gently pulls on them and slowly reveals the entire flower, stem and all.

“Dorran and I parted ways after the New Archive refused entry to me. But when I follow the patterns he showed me, I feel like he’s still around.” She hands the flower to a passing child, who carries it away with a look of wonder, even without seeing how it came to be. “He’s the only one who ever really understood how I felt.” Rain begins to fall, and she smiles.


End file.
